Thursday, March 10, 2011

I have to allow that I didn't know what he was talking about, so I did a bit of quick research (I love Wikipedia!) and discovered that "Sword Of Truth" is a series of books by Terry Goodkind the first of which is called "Wizard's First Rule". I had not in fact read these books, having come to the realization of Rule #1 all on my own by the simple expedient of watching my fellow humans for quite a long time, as well as examining my own inner workings. But I have to say, Goodkind's take on Rule #1 is pretty good, and more to the point, perfectly explains the situation in America today (on ALL sides).

So here is Terry Goodkind's read on Rule #1, taken from the book "Wizard's First Rule".

"Wizard's First Rule: people are stupid." Richard and Kahlan frowned even more. "People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool."

Pity the poor human. The main quality that makes us human is not speech, or tool making, it is the near infinite capacity for self delusion. Understand this and you will understand the greater part of history, politics and religion.

3 comments:

Terry Goodkind got off one or two good lines in that series. But in the end he fails his own test. By the end we find that Goodkind's a doctrinaire raw gum Randroid whose solution to being disagreed with is quite literally genocide. Anyone who disagrees with him is scum and deserves to die.

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